2 weeks Ago By Firstpost
Elections in Bangladesh are still a year away, to be held only in late 2025 or early 2026, the head of the interim government, Muhammad Yunus, apprised in December. Restoration of democracy, however, is no guarantee of its successful working. While the recently ousted Awami League is being reviled as fascist, the track records of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and HM Ershad’s Jatiya Party (JP) are equally atrocious.
Bangladesh has a history of descending into chaos, demanding the ouster of Ershad (1990) and Begum Khaleda Zia (1996). August 5 events might be the latest, but perhaps not the last, act of Bangladesh’s disenchantment with its leaders. Democracy has apparently failed to strike roots in a country that was the first in the entire Afro-Asian region to fix minimum age eligibility at 18 years (1972) when 21 years was the prevalent norm.
The country has been buffeted by assassinations, military rules, aborted coup attempts, distrusted election results, bloody and violent protests for the ouster of elected governments, and the imposition of the dome of Islam as the state religion over the secular architecture of the Constitution (1988). The republic switched from a parliamentary form to a presidential form (1975) of government before reverting to a parliamentary form (1996) two decades later; it experimented with the concept of a non-party caretaker government between 1996 and 2011 prior to its abolition and resort to it again (2024) in a political vacuum but without any express constitutional provision. This piece, however, is occasioned by the 50th anniversary of the original derailment of democracy in Bangladesh.
It happened not through any military coup, though they were not long in coming either, but a constitutional coup ironically engineered by the founder of Bangladesh himself, viz, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-75). Democracy was exiled 50 years ago on January 25, 1975, when, as Talukder Maniruzzman states, “on the initiative of Sheikh Mujib and against the private sentiments of the majority of the members of Parliament belonging to the Awami League, the Constitution was amended to provide for a presidential form of government” ( Bangladesh in 1975: The Fall of Mujib Regime and Its Aftermath, Asian Survey Journal, February 1976, P.120 ).
The constitutional amendment was rushed through Parliament without any reading or discussion, within a span of half an hour. The normal rules of business were suspended for this purpose. The amendment established a presidential system of government, with a president elected by direct election for a fixed term, with a vice president to be appointed by the president, and with a council of ministers to aid and advise the president.
The Parliament would be unable to bring about the fall of the council of ministers. The amendment further provided that “Bangabandhu Mujibur Rahman, the Father of the Nation” would be the President of the country for five years from the date of the amendment. It was not merely a change in the form of government but an act to obliterate multi-party democracy.
It provided for the formation of one party. On June 6, Mujib announced the formation of a national party, viz, Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BKSAL). In those days there was no BNP or JP.
But radical leftist parties refused to join BKSAL despite repeated appeals by Mujib. His day of reckoning, however, was nearer. In less than three months, Mujib was gone.
A military coup eliminated him along with most members of his family on August 15, 1975. His legacy of presidential form of government came in handy to the military dictators like Ziaur Rahman and HM Ershad. How did a great democrat turn into a dictator within a span of three years? It might be recalled that after Bangladesh came into existence, Mujib had chosen to become Prime Minister instead of the widely anticipated role as President.
“Indeed he had been hailed as President of Bangladesh on reaching London, and it was universally assumed he would continue in that role,” says Anthony Mascarenhas, who was one of the first persons to meet Mujib after he reached London on a PIA flight, following his release from captivity in Pakistan in early January 1972. Masceranhas, a Pakistani Christian journalist, who first broke the story of the Pakistan army’s genocide in East Bengal in his widely acclaimed book The Rape of Bangla Desh (1971) and had to flee Pakistan for Britain for that transgression, knew Mujib closely since 1956. “Mujib’s perceptions were”—says Mascarenhas—“too narrow".
“He had a one-track mind in the matter of power. If the system required the Prime Minister to hold the reins of authority, then Mujib would be Prime Minister. But if instead supreme executive authority was vested in the President, then Mujib would be the President” ( Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood, P.
10 ). Since Bangladesh’s Constitution (1972), like India’s, was planned on the Westminster model, Mujib had preferred to become Prime Minister, appointing “a non-political, the meekest, most inoffensive man he could find,” Justice Abu Sayed Chowdhury, as the first President of Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s Constituent Assembly, packed with Awami League members—as a result of the elections held on December 7, 1970, in erstwhile East Pakistan—adopted the Constitution (1972) at a remarkably short span of less than one year after independence.
No doubt it was greatly influenced by the Constitution of India (1949), which provided a ready-made model to Dr Kamal Hossain, Bar-at-Law, who headed the Drafting Committee. Holding the first general elections within three months of the adoption of the Constitution was another milestone towards democracy. However, the problem arose ahead of the first general elections to Bangladesh’s unicameral Parliament on March 7, 1973.
This has been described by Abul Mansur Ahmad in his political memoirs (in Bengali), viz Amar Dekha Rajneetir Panchas Bochor ( Fifty Years of Politics As I Saw it ). Ahmad says that ruling party Awami League, a product of parliamentary politics itself, was ready to have a conducive and accommodative attitude in the elections. They were ready to allow opposition party leaders on radio and television (a facility allowed even by Yahya Khan’s military government ahead of the 1970 general election in Pakistan).
However, what made the party harden its stance towards the opponents was fear of anti-incumbency, since nascent Bangladesh was passing through economic hardships. Police firing on students’ demonstration against the Vietnam War in the heart of Dhaka on January 1, 1972 had led to an outrage. The Awami League leaders, according to Ahmad, developed an imaginary fear of losing heavily.
The opposition parties, sensing Awami League’s disquiet, shelved their earlier plan to close ranks. Ahmad was confident Awami League would sweep the elections. He thus advised the party, both in person and through his columns in daily Ittefaq , to allow at least 50 capable opposition party members to win in the elections to make parliamentary democracy vibrant in Bangladesh.
However, the Awami League, seized by doubts about its victory, acted on the contrary. They worked overtime to defeat every opposition party member. The practice adopted by them, says Ahmad, could never be termed as healthy.
Not only were the opposition party members not allowed to address the electorate on radio and television, but they even found it difficult to get the proper number of vehicles for election campaigns. Mujib toured the entire country by helicopter, whereas other ministers also took advantage of government vehicles in election campaigns. The opposition parties, in their complacency, debated who would be the Prime Minister—Ataur Rehman Khan or Maulana Bhashani.
This ultimately led to their complete debacle. The Awami League swept the elections, winning 292 out of 300 general seats. The party further consolidated its victory by winning all of the 15 additional seats reserved for women in Parliament.
It thus ended up winning 308 seats out of 315 in the unicameral legislature. The victory was almost as comprehensive as in the December 7, 1970 elections in erstwhile East Pakistan. Using a boat—incidentally, the Awami League’s election symbol—as a metaphor, Ahmad warned the ruling party as well as cautioned the masses.
He argued that like a boat must have rowers on both flanks instead of one, Parliament must have good members on the opposition benches to counterbalance members on treasury benches. To the voters, he said that the boat of 1970 was different from the boat of 1973. In 1970, the boat was for embarking, but in 1973 it was for moving ahead.
While Ahmad’s counsel fell on deaf ears, his worst fears that Bangladesh was gravitating towards one-party rule actually came true before long. On January 25, 1975, on the initiative of Mujib, the Constitution was amended to provide a presidential form of government. Backsliding of democracy was not an uncommon phenomenon in decolonised nations of Asia and Africa.
Pakistan itself, from which Bangladesh segregated, witnessed two back-to-back military regimes of Field Marshal Ayub Khan and General Yayha Khan extending from 1958 to 1971. Now Bangladesh was about to fall into the same trap despite its sound constitutional plan. Mujib aimed at what he described as the “Second Revolution”.
As his biographer S.A. Karim informs, Mujib was thoroughly disenchanted with the corruption and selfishness of the middle class, which formed the backbone of his party, the Awami League ( Sheikh Mujib: Triumph and Tragedy, P.
345 ). The devastating famine of 1974, a result of government mismanagement as much as the actions of hoarders and speculators, had taken the sheen off his government. Law and order and the call for a Communist revolution complicated the scenario.
On December 28, 1974—as a prelude to the constitutional coup—Mujib’s cabinet proclaimed a ‘state of emergency’ suspending fundamental rights and stripping the courts of their power to intervene in any manner. On January 25, 1975, Mujib was sworn in as the president. Did Mujib’s proclamation of emergency and his switching to the presidential form of government influence the course of Indian politics in any way? Kuldip Nayar (1977) informs that shortly after Mujib assumed absolute power, JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) had a meeting of all opposition parties in Delhi on February 11, 1975.
JP told them that it was possibly a rehearsal for what they themselves might have to face in India. They must be prepared for it. Asoka Mehta, informs Nayar, rejected JP’s logic, exclaiming that such a thing was not possible in India.
Morarji Desai was, however, more receptive and said if that happened in India, he would start an agitation in Gujarat. A dismissive Charan Singh remarked, “What she (Indira Gandhi) wants to do, let her do it,” adding, “What possibly could she do?”. Raj Narain remarked, “At least she could put both of us in jail.
” At this point, JP intervened to say they were not serious. They should consider the possibility of an end to civil liberties and a multi-party system. He said the opposition leaders should agitate for ending the external emergency (implemented since the beginning of the Indo-Pakistan War, 1971).
While everybody wanted to do “something”, nobody knew what it was. No one took JP seriously. Later that year, when most opposition leaders were detained in Rohtak jail during the Emergency, some did recall JP’s warning.
( The Judgement: Inside Story of the Emergency in India, P.182-183 ). It is a matter of opinion whether we should give Mujib his due credit on the fiftieth anniversary of India’s Emergency later this year, as an influencer! The writer is the author of the book ‘The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India’ (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views..
